Fast and furiously funny, His Girl Friday blends two formulas popular in Hollywood movies of the late 1930s: scathing satire on political corruption and romantic screwball comedy. In the film, newspaper managing editor Walter Burns (Cary Grant) ruthlessly scoops the competition by hiding a fugitive with his top reporter and writer Hildy Johnson (Rosalind Russell), who is also his ex-wife. While Burns and Johnson clash romantically and professionally, it is a given that he and the newspaper cannot get along without her. Adding to the hilarity are Johnson’s fiancé (Ralph Bellamy), whose courting is sweetly inept, and the governor’s messenger (Billy Gilbert), whose rejection of bribery is the film’s wickedest moment of truth.

In His Girl Friday nothing is allowed to interfere with the dizzying pace set by the actors, who compete to interrupt each other. The talk crackles with wit; the overlapping dialogue of seasoned journalists and mayoral henchmen is smart, real, and mean. Like the 1928 stage play The Front Page, by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur (on which it is based), the film looks plain and feels tight, even claustrophobic, a feeling Hawks also achieved in his action movies, which test men’s camaraderie and honor. The Hawksian comedy, here at its best, is a battle of the sexes, with roles reversed to allow for plenty of humiliation and triumph on both sides.